


true in every way

by Anonymous



Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson never knew he was attracted to brilliance. </p>
            </blockquote>





	true in every way

**Author's Note:**

> So this is from a while ago. Quite a long while, actually. I wrote all of it at 11:30, right after I watched The Great Game, sitting in my completely dark room, hunched over my iPod and typing with my thumbs. TGG-centric, as you might imagine.

John never knew he was attracted to brilliance until he found out that brilliance takes the form of a man and can tell a person's life story from the little tell-tales that define them; minuscule motes of personality and physicality and humanity that pile up and pile up without ceasing. Like a person's shadow: inseparable, inerasable, unnoticed. Except to Sherlock. Sherlock notices everything and then fits it together as neat and smooth as a pieces of a puzzle. John hadn't really remembered the world was supposed to make sense like that—sense had been lost to him sometime between the first time he saw a man killed and the day he discovered he couldn’t walk without a limp—and it was oddly soothing. Everything sliding into place. Perfect. Brilliant.

He hadn't known that brilliance is tall and thin and wears impeccable suits, and speaks in a mellow, harmonious baritone like nothing John’s ever heard before. He hadn't known brilliance suffers from some sort of addiction to nicotine patches and intellectual thrills and keeps a severed head in the refrigerator and is _insufferable_ and _lazy_ and _rude._ That doesn’t make sense, but John knew people don’t make sense. But Sherlock is all over the board: erratic, spontaneous, and nothing at all as neat and clean-cut as his deductions, and that seems out of place in someone who is so coldly logical. In fact, he seems to toe the line between coldly logical—not caring about anyone, at all, ever, which would make sense to Sherlock—and flashes of compassion and kindness which would be commonplace to anyone who _isn’t_ Sherlock. These are rare, infinitesimally rare, and Sherlock only shows these to—

( _"to you"_ a tiny voice in his head whispers)

—doesn’t really show them at all. The point is, John realized he was drawn to brilliance sometime between “Afghanistan or Iraq?” and “That’s not what people normally say” and it is _dazzling_. Too bright, too cold, and every bit as hopeless as he would have guessed, but dazzling all the same. The only thing is—he’s not really sure whether he means brilliance the abstraction or Sherlock the man, but are they really all that different?

::

Strangely enough, the moment this all goes through his mind is the moment in which he steps out into view of Sherlock, too warm in the damn heavy jacket, his tongue thick and wooden in his mouth and his pulse pounding against his skull so hard he can barely hear. He says what Moriarty tells him to say, and watches Sherlock’s face crumple like he’s just had all the breath knocked out of him. Every reflex in John’s body screams, _screams_ for him to act, so he does.

::

Sherlock had already known John would kill for him. When John grabs Moriarty, it’s the first he realizes that John will die for him. John can see it in his eyes. That’s funny, because it’s the first time John realizes it too, and it hits him like a lightning bolt and builds in momentum with every beat of his heart.

::

When Moriarty leaves, John isn’t thinking about him. He's watching Sherlock pace and wave the gun around and he is remembering. Remembering people, to be exact—like Lestrade.

_("Because Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day-if we're very, very lucky-he might even be a good one.")_

And Sally Donovan.

_("he gets off on it.")_

And Sherlock.

_("Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them.")_

And—Sherlock again, unwilling to a hero but willing to prevent a person he’d just met from being arrested for murder.

_(“Actually, you know what, ignore me.”)_

And when he sees the laser dots trained on Sherlock and knows they must be trained on him too, John's not thinking much about it. That’s strange, really, because he’s sure they are both about to die and every other time he’s been in this situation his brain has been working furiously, furiously to find a way out.

But not this time. This time, he's thinking that maybe it's possible to be attracted to brilliance and to learn to love the man embodying it, unconditionally, whether he makes sense or not. Whether or not he's a great man or a good one.

When Sherlock looks down and sideways at him, just a tiny flicker of his eyes and John finds himself giving a minute, stiff jerk of the jaw in return, John thinks that maybe it's possible to be loved by both man and brilliance in return.

Sherlock pulls the trigger.


End file.
